Good to see nuanced discussion is alive and well here.

Hi Bert. Thanks for your comments. There's plenty there to respond to!

First of all, you're right that nothing I said above reinvents the wheel in terms of painting a picture of where our party currently stands. I've only been in the party less than two years and it has taken me some time to get up to speed, even roughly, on how we do business and the path we have taken.

You mention that you have been calling for the development of a clear ideological identity based on the pillars of the international Green movement and indeed our own founding principles for some years now. I have no doubt that you have! I think that the present moment provides the best opportunity in a long time to embed these ideas into the party. You're right to argue that we need to convene a national convention which will examine all these issues.

However, the kind of change that I think we both want to see happen will not happen by itself. There are a lot of progressives in this party but that doesn't mean that progressive voices will win out when it comes to voting on specific policy changes. This is why I think we need to start thinking about forming a loose group of party members who are interested in these kind of policy changes to start developing coherent alternative vision for the future of the party so we can make a powerful case to the rest of the party members when we do eventually have a convention to hammer out these issues.

The kind of changes we're looking for won't happen by themselves. I think we both know plenty of folks in the party who share at least roughly common positions in relation to social justice particularly, and I think we need to start communicating with them with a view to working on this!
Nobody else is going to do it for us.

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear what you think about this. Also, I'll definitely read that article by Rudig, hadn't come across it before. Sounds like there were plenty of forewarnings in that paper!

Well at least it's a compost heap! Thanks for the comment Ahmed. It is worth remembering that none of the problems you mentioned were actually caused by us. I agree that our participation in NAMA and the IMF bailout raises big questions about our own convictions and competence, but it does not make us the main authors of what happened. You're right that we put too much emphasis on 'stability' and 'strong government' when what we should have been more concerned about is whether these actions were the right thing to do.

That's not something I considered at all- From Leadbetter's own descriptions of his bespoke hardware I presumed that what he was using was top-notch hardware and rigorous methods of analysis. Interesting points.

Hi Dervish. I don't really care for the tone of your comments - keep it respectful or just go elsewhere, alright?- but you do raise one key point that some other commenters have legitimately made. I think my article probably overstated the case that DF's coverage somehow damages other criticism elsewhere on the web. I'm happy to modify this position a little and say that one piece of technically-minded content doesn't cancel out, say, a piece of writing more focused on the experience of playing a game. However, I'm entitled to argue, as I did in the article, that DF's technologised discourse propounds a particularly narrow view of 'performance' that restricts its comment to only the most high-budget of titles.
I'm not suggesting that hardware doesn't matter. Clearly, videogames are a highly technologically-dependent medium. But when we write about videogames, we can choose what we feel to be important and what we feel to be less important. I'm simply arguing for one over the other. You're free to do the same.

And to go back to my first point- keep the comments respectful. We don't tolerate anything less.

I think you raise a lot of useful questions there, and I find it difficult to disagree with most of them.
I agree that DF can't be blamed for their own popularity, nor do they have some sort of responsibility to promote a different sort of gaming discourse. I also agree that framecounting and all the other DF activities don't in any sense nullify discussion elsewhere.

I don't quite get the bit where you suggest that gaming is a "medium where money correlates with quality" though- can't gorgeous-looking games be made on a shoestring budget? I think they can- just not the kind of gorgeous that DF is preoccupied with. And this is the nub of my point- even on their own terms, DF is concerned with a very particular type of aesthetics that isn't really about aesthetics at all but a cold, mechanical kind of understanding that is about numbers (framerates,pixels,polygons,antialiasing,lag) without making sense of the effect of these things.

I must say your final point that games criticism should never be about 'correcting the tastes of the masses' is an important one. The article may have had a bit of an elitist tone but I don't think that this is about correcting tastes- it's about making a case for what I personally believe to be important. As I said in a few replies on Twitter to readers, I'm not at all saying that aesthetic observations and discussions shouldn't be a part of games criticism- they certainly should- but maybe we should talk about the effects of visual beauty rather than preoccupy ourselves with the nuts and bolts of polygons and texture fill rates which should probably be left to videogame developers.

Every time I think of this game I'm reminded of that level in Mission Impossible on the Nintendo 64 where you have to navigate your way around a party at an ambassador's residence whilst spying. If this game can channel some of the tension and excitement that I recall from this, then we're in for a treat.
Also, the concept of a reverse Turing test is a fantastic one. Hope the execution lives up to the idea.

Looks like GoldenEye is going to come off better in this cross-format competition. Bizarrely, Bloodstone AND GoldenEye were released on DS. And both were developed by the same team. Probably not a lot between the games.

Bastian, calling someone a moron isn't going to endear you to anybody 'round these parts. Next time, just make your point without insulting them. We're all adults here.

Good article. I think that the lack of thematic innovation in the vast majority of games is a general malady that affects movies, music and books just as much as videogames. The economic imperative to make a profit necessarily mitigates against risk-taking of any kind.